Hellier 2

I watched the second season of Hellier, of course. It’s even wilder, more aimless and unfocused, than the original season (and it now has almost nothing to do with the town of Hellier). The core team of paranormal investigators is just as credulous as ever. Following up on “synchronicities” they perceive as complex, wandering down investigative paths that always lead to dead ends, and breathlessly following yet another unsolicited email with a fabulous story, the team manages to somehow always keep the faith, confident that at some point they will uncover something remarkable, all the while believing that they themselves are now significant, somehow part of some massive and largely invisible magic initiation. I don’t even mean “magic” in a dismissive way–they literally believe that they are being led on into a real magic initiation spell. They believe that magic is real, including the “hedge witch” magic of one investigator, the “chaos magic” dabbled in by her co-investigator and spouse, and the ritual magic of Thelema. They believe that all these magics coexist, that magic matters to this case, that ultradimensional beings might be goblins and fairies and yetis and aliens, that if you can read meaning into coincidence then it is a profound synchronicity used by a higher power to lead you to truth, that the 37th parallel is a unique zone of paranormal activity of all kind, that a space man named Indrid Cold was involved in the Mothman events of the 1960s and 1970s and recently died in a spaceship-to-spaceship collision, that aliens visit old ladies in nursing homes to celebrate Mother’s Day, that felons with remarkable tales and signs of psychosis are potentially victims of massive child-sacrifice cults…They believe in “weirdness,” and they want to believe, and if someone tells them something fantastical, they will accept it as true and attempt to assimilate it into their worldview.

I increasingly believe that a feeling of societal isolation is in large part what informs the views of these investigators and their allies. They can all trade strange “secrets” and talk paranormal events as though they are experts in a highly specialized field. They view themselves as special, called to a sacred task, because they “ask questions” that most people ignore. One of the lead investigators acknowledges that he has always been a paranoid personality. And they talk a lot about how paranormal phenomena seem to especially congregate around marginalized people living on the fringes of society, or living in between spaces (e.g., after a move). This, like so much else, seems to be looking at a correlation and reading causation into it–or something similar. Central to this season, they accept the narrative of a woman in rural Kentucky with a history of criminal charges because it ties in enough with what they want to believe (to their credit, they are initially skeptical of her). That woman’s narrative, which throws together the occult and military conspiracies and aliens and goblins and pedophile rings and a whole bunch of other nonsense, sounds like the delusions of someone suffering from some form of psychosis. They actually manage to speak with her later (from prison), and she insists that there is still some form of occult conspiracy, but she backs off on many of the claims she initially laid out, saying that she had just looked stuff up online to explain what was happening. She’s cobbled together a bizarre worldview out of delusions and the weird corners of the Internet, and these investigators never even seriously raise the possibility of mental illness, instead enabling her worldview. To the extent that they doubt her claims at first, it is because they think she might be under the influence of a government disinformation agent.

I think the people in this show, the investigators themselves, feel marginalized. And they’ve found a community within paranormal circles and fringe thinkers. They’ve found purpose in this particular investigation. It feels a little like if Behind the Curve was produced from inside the fringe community, without the irony and self-awareness.

When you find support for your ideas in the discovery of dissimilar deflated balloons at different locations, I think it’s safe to say you might be straining a little too hard for meaning.

Still, the documentary’s second season is long and rambling in a way that can be dull and repetitive but is also a fascinating look into how these people are thinking. There are moments in the show that are weird, precisely because I genuinely believe the authenticity of the investigators. I think they really believe in everything they’re doing. And even when the weirdest moments of the show still rely on you being willing to connect dots that don’t require a single one-to-one connection, or any connection at all, I still respect that they manage to have their weird moments without ever feeling like they’re trying to pull my leg. They’re concerned about being hoaxed (not enough at times, I think), but I think they would never even consider trying to hoax their viewers. They believe in what they’re doing too much. They believe in their research, their investigations, their 3 AM debates. They’re not great at what they’re doing, but they’re doing the best they can.

Nothing’s changed my perspective, but it’s a good show to have on in the background while working out. I’m invested in these goofballs, and I’d like to see another season, even though it feels like they’ve totally exhausted the narrative at this point.

Side note for those who watched the show…When Greg and Tyler go into that cave for the first time, that might have been the most frustrating moment of the whole show for me! They go into the cave without proper PPE or anyone outside of the cave who knows where they are. What if they have a cave-in or a fall or some other disabling injury? What if they’re right about the murder-cult and they get attacked? What if there’s a dangerous animal inside? Then they go in the cave and claim to hear whispers, though I heard nothing remotely like a whisper on the audio, and they refuse to investigate that further! Dudes! If there’s really a murder-cult operating right there, you could be so close to the truth–OR, more likely, you’ll quickly find a more reasonable explanation for what you’re hearing. Then they find those animal bones, which they make a big deal about, even though it could just be where a bear or something similar drags its prey, and THEY DON’T EVEN GRAB A BONE TO BRING BACK WITH THEM. Guys! You could have that sucker analyzed! You could provide some hard evidence to support some of your theories–or, more likely, you could actually disprove some of the ideas you’re bouncing around. As is so often the case, they miss obvious approaches in the moment and almost seem hell-bent on approaching investigations ass-backwards. Ah!!! Hellier in a nutshell.

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One thought on “Hellier 2”

What a frustrating show that I wanted to like. I think I was more bored than just hate-watching it.

There is NOT a fine line between idiots and idiot savants. Nobody wants to be thought of as the former and some like to think they are the latter. The worst part of season 2 was when they convinced themselves they had almost gotten somebody abducted by aliens by using hypnosis to suggest they victim/volunteer had seen lights in the sky.
(I kept wishing James Randhi was there to criticize the “experiment”. I would have taken somebody that was non-English-speaking from a culture that didn’t watch lots of The X-Files or have a preconceived notion of what an alien abduction looks like.) Anyway, that poor guy is going to need a few years of therapy for the damage they have done.

Despite that, I think the biggest problem with the show is that there isn’t a clearly planned path from A to C via B. It feels like everything is just plonked down on the table as is. For simple ideas and connections, a 30 second speech on video is fine. For the complicated events and claims, there needs to be a solid overview then progressively more detailed information.